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Files in the CSV format can be imported
to and exported from programs that store
data in tables, such as Microsoft Excel or
OpenOffice Calc.
Already defined, CSV stands for “comma
separated values”. Thus, we can say that
a comma-separated file is a delimited text
Fig. 4.1: CSV Storage Format
file that uses a comma to separate values.

Fig. 4.2: Features of a CSV file

Each line in a file is known as data/record. Each record consists of one or more fields, separated
by commas (also known as delimiters), i.e., each of the records is also a part of this file. Tabular data
is stored as text in a CSV file. The use of comma as a field separator is the source of the name for
this file format. It stores our data into a spreadsheet or a database.

CTM: The most commonly used delimiter in a CSV file is usually a comma.

4.14 WHY USE CSV

With the use of social networking sites and its various associated applications being extensively
used requires the handling of huge data. The problem arises as to how to handle and organize this
large unstructured data as shown in the Fig. 4.3(a) given below.

Python Libraries

Fig. 4.3(a): Problem of Huge Data
4.9